Un-erase Files

[yamafopa]

Well the boss has done it again (I swear it was not me!). He has deleted a pile of important files from his HDD as well as from the Recycle Bin. I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for the best way to go about trying to recover these. Is there native support within Windows? Is there a purchaseable product that will be able to do this. Maybe some freeware? Finally I imagine that adding new software to his system may overwrite data that I am trying to save. How do I get around this potential problem?
TIA for any advice...

yamafopa!

 

[bcastner]

Norton System Suite might be the way to go. The antivirus portion has additional protections on the Recycle Bin, and there is a good unerase utility.

 

[AFTech81]

Since he had it stored on his hard drive, I'm guess that you didn't have recent backups of the files? To prevent future problems, I would recommend backing up his computer on a constant basis, or having him move his information to a server.



Brian
USAF
Network +, Win2k Pro
No try not. Do or do not. --Yoda

 

[yamafopa]

bcastner

I thought about the Norton product, but still wonder about overwriting deleted data that I want to recover with the Norton installation...

AFTech

Computer is laptop that is stored at Boss's home. I was not aware that important data was there.... My fault, and lesson learned...

yamafopa!

 

[Marcs41]

You can alway use bcastners suggestion, but, since you are afraid to overwrite, take out the laptop disk, get a IDE adapter cable to connect that drive to another PC, on the second IDE controller and install The Norton suite on that PC's C drive.
You won't touch the laptop drive during install, but you can use the tools to scan for erased files.
BEFORE you do the last part, take a disk-mage of that laptop drive, just to make sure. No disktool is 100% foolproof and I guess you don't want to lose more data at this point.

Marc
[sub]If 'something' 'somewhere' gives 'some' error, expect random guesses or no replies at all. Please specify details.
Free Tip: The F1 Key does NOT destroy your PC![/sub]

 

[yamafopa]

Marcs

Good tip, thanks. Did not know that there was a way to connect my laptop HDD to a regular PC. One thing I don't know, how does the laptop HDD get it's power?

yamafopa!

 

[bcastner]

Usually from the connector that is also the data cable on the laptop. When you purchase the little adapter thingy there will a place to plug in a normal power connector.

 

[wcburton]

Check out this company. I purchased the product and have had great success with it. They have a version that will recover over the network also. You can download it and run it no charge to see what files it would recover before actually purchasing it.

http://www.r-studio.com/